The Way of the Warrior
In the Changeling infiltration In the Federation-Klingon War (2372-73) ' |image= |series= |production=40514-473 |producer(s)= |story= |script= Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe |director= James L. Conway |imdbref=tt0394906 |guests=Andrew Robinson as Elim Garak, Penny Johnson Jerald as Kasidy Yates, Marc Alaimo as Dukat, Robert O'Reilly as Gowron, J.G. Hertzler as Martok, Obi Ndefo as Drex, Christopher Darga as Kaybok and William Dennis Hunt as Huraga |previous_production=The Adversary |next_production=Hippocratic Oath |episode=DS9 S01E01 |airdate= 2 October. 1995 |previous_release=(DS9) The Adversary (Overall) Twisted |next_release=(DS9) The Visitor (Overall) Parturition |story_date(s)= 49011.4 (2372) |previous_story=(DS9) The Adversary (Overall) Non Sequitur |next_story=The Visitor }} Summary After chasing Odo for almost three and one-half hours in a simulated station attack by a Changeling, Sisko retires to his quarters to prepare for a dinner date with Captain Kasidy Yates. Unfortunately, shortly after Yates arrives, Dax summons Sisko to Ops. The new Klingon flagship Negh'Var has just arrived. Its commander, General Martok, has requested shore leave privileges for his troops. Sisko graciously offers them, only to watch at least twenty more Klingon ships de-cloak around the station. When questioned about the presence of the large Klingon fleet, Martok claims that Gowron has sent them to help defend the sector from an attack by the Dominion. To find out the Klingons' true purpose, Sisko contacts Starfleet and recruits Lieutenant Commander Worf for a special assignment. Worf soon arrives from the Klingon monastery on Boreth, where he had taken an extended leave. He has decided to resign from Starfleet but will perform his duty until then. Through an old family friend, Worf teams that the Klingons are preparing to attack Cardassia. With the fall of the Obsidian Order , the civilian government recently wrested power from Central Command. Gowron believes that the Dominion has engineered the takeover. He intends to conquer Cardassia, thereby eliminating the Dominion foothold in the Alpha Quadrant. Sisko tries to dissuade Mattok from attacking, but when the general returns to his ship, he gives the order to begin. Through Garak, Sisko warns Dukat that the Klingons are coming. When it appears that Cardassia will fall, Sisko takes the Defiant through the battle zone to rescue the leaders of the Cardassian civilian govemment - the Detepa Counci - and escort them with Dukat to the station. Just to be sure, Sisko has Bashir perform blood tests on everyone. The doctor finds no Changelings among them. Gowron angrily returns to DS9 to capture the Detepa Council. After a fierce battle between the newly upgraded station and a fleet of Klingon vessels, Sisko and Worf persuade Gowron to call off the offensive. With gratitude, the Detepa Council returns to Cardassia Prime, Worf decides against resignation, taking a position as the Strategic Operations officer on DS9. And the Klingons? They begin fortifying the Cardassian outposts they captured during the offensive. Apparently Gowron intends to make the Klingon Empire's presence felt in the sector for some time to come. Errors and Explanations Plot Oversights # The episode opens with Sisko and Kira marching down a hall in search of Odo. They pause at a door, go through a dramatic countdown, dive inside, and sweep the room with phaser fire. Then they enter the next room. Odo slides out of a chair, knocks them off balance, and flees the room as a bird, heading for the promenade. First, why do Sisko and Kira sweep only the rooms with phaser fire? Why not the corridor as well? Couldn't Odo duck around a corner and flatten into the wall (as he did in The Siege)? And why do they bother to do the countdown thing before bursting into the room? Why not just burst in and shoot? (Are they determined to give Odo enough time to get comfortable?) Also, Sisko and Kira seem to have plenty of time to bring their weapons into position and fire as Odo slides off the chair, but they just stand there and watch him until he knocks them off balance. A similar set of problems occurs when the action moves to the promenade and Bashir's team takes over the search. They run through the promenade waiting to get into position—waiting for Bashir's signal to fire. Why? Shouldn't they sweep everything as they go? Unfortunately, there is a larger issue here. Frankly—without the benefit of some type of sensors and computerized tracking—I can't see any way that Sisko and company would have a chance of finding a Changeling who really wanted to hide out on the station. Even in the open stretches, the Changeling could morph into something thats much faster than a humanoid. In addition, the station contains too many places that restrict humanoid movement—the conduits, for example. These same places pose no problem for a Changeling (as we saw in The Adversary). Remember, any time the Changeling disappears from view, you have no way to figure out what the Changeling has become. In short, you would have to start at one end of the station and send teams down every corridor and every conduit simultaneously - all the while sweeping every room they encountered along the way. Sweeping everything as they go would result in the phasers quickly depleting the power cells. # I'm more than willing to be corrected, but I don't recall Bajor ever signing a peace treaty with the Klingons. Yet in this episode a Klingon tells Odo that as long as he wears a Bajoran uniform, they are allies. I understand that the Federation and the Klingon Empire are allies (at least they used to be), but Bajor isn't part of the Federation, is it? No, but Bajor has – for the moment - sided with the Federation. # Sisko and company face a conundrum after discovering the true purpose of the Klingon armada. The Federation Council decides to do nothing. Yet Sisko feels compelled to warn the Cardassians. But if he warns the Cardassians, it would constitute a betrayal of an ally - the Klingon Empire. Believing that he and his staff are smarter than the Federation Council - though the council members undoubtedly have hordes of advisers and most likely have access to additional information - Sisko comes up with a way to warn the Cardassians through unofficial channels. He invites Garak to the wardroom to measure him for a new suit. The staff then discusses the fact that more than one hundred Klingon ships will reach Cardassian space in one hour. Garak leaves and immediately calls Dukat. Dukat asks Garak why the Klingon would invade Cardassia. Garak re- sponds that - according to his sources - the Klingons believe that the Founders have taken over the Cardassian Empire. Garak must have other sources beyond Sisko and crew because they never mentioned the motivation for the Klingons' attack. (In other words, how did Garak know this piece of information?) LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 9:39 am: Garak mentioned to Odo during their breakfast that he had heard disturbing things about what’s been going on on Cardassia Seniram He probably made an educated guess, adding what he had heard about what’s been happing on Cardassia to what he overheard from the senior staff, and attributed the information to his sources, in order to prevent Dukat from realising it was a guess. # When making arrangements to rendezvous with Dukat and the Detepa Council, Sisko says he doubts the Klingons will fire on a Federation ship. Hold it! Let's back up a little bit to see if this statement makes any sense. Earlier in the episode, Captain Yates departs the station in her ship, the Xhosa. A Klingon vessel captures the Xhosa with a tractor beam. Sisko comes rushing to the rescue and threatens to fire on the Klingon vessel. Kaybok - the commander of the Klingon vessel - backs down and releases the Xhosa. A short time later, General Martok shows up in Sisko's office with Kaybok's knife. Dax explains that Martok killed Kaybok for not obeying orders - for not firing on a Federation ship! One would think that this titbit of information was passed through the troops. Now, what do you think are the chances that the Klingons won't fire on the Defiant. The Klingons know the Defiant can fight back if necessary. # I wonder why Dax suddenly got a promotion to lieutenant commander. Probably to ensure she has a higher security clearance consistent with her position. # This episode illuminates an important difference between Picard and Sisko. Sisko decides to rescue the Detepa Council. He knows he'll be travelling through a War zone, The Defiant gets all the way to the rendezvous site and then discovers three Klingon vessels attacking the Cardassian ship that carries Dukat and the council. This was a foreseeable was it not? Yet Sisko pauses to consider what he will do next Picard would have already anticipated option and decided what his response would be. (Yes, there were times when Picard took his time making a decision in private. But when he stepped onto the bridge he was always on-tine and ready to go.) Rene (Nit Central) on Friday, August 10, 2001 - 7:52 pm: If the next action you took could start a war, wouldn't you have trouble giving the order? LUIGI NOVI (Nit Central) on Friday, August 10, 2001 - 9:18 pm: I agree, and I would point out that Picard made a similar pause when the Duras sisters' ships attacked the ship Worf was on at the end of Redemption Part 1 (TNG), despite Phil's allegation that Picard never did such a thing on the bridge. Obviously, the moment was produced this way for dramatic effect, and it was the correct thing for the creators' to do. Phil is trying to find more meaning or fault in it than there really is. # There's a male bonding scene of sorts during the great battle at the end of the episode when Bashir saves Odo from a Klingon attacker. One question, though: The Klingon is attacking Odo with a bat'leth, right? Would a bat'leth really hurt Odo? (Answer: No. He's a Changeling. A thief threw a mace through Odo's face in Emissary and the young Jem'Haddar jumped completely through him in The Abandoned.) The Klingon doesn’t know that! # Doesn't it seem like there are very few Klingon warriors actually boarding DS9, given the presence Of "dozens" of warships? And why aren't they concentrating on taking over Ops with a Mongolian horde technique? (l know they beamed twenty or so people up there, but it just seems to me that, strategically, that's where you would want to concentrate your efforts. It would make more sense to keep pumping people in there until you overwhelmed Sisko and company.) They weren't expecting Sisko’s people to put up as much of a resistance as they did. #At the end of the episode O'Brien makes a big deal out of Worf wearing a red uniform. Didn't Worf wear red during the first season of NextGen? Yes, but he hasn’t worn it for a while. # So Worf is "Strategic Operations" officer, eh? Makes one wonder how the Bajoran sector survived an entire three seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine without someone occupying this very important—and previously unheard-of—-position! (Does this sound like a "make-work" posting to anyone else?) Maybe it was decided to bring together elements from other people’s jobs, and place them in the hands of a single officer. # And speaking of O'Brien, he can be a real bootlicker at times. Not only does he compliment Worf on how he looks in red, he also tells Worf that the Klingon couldn't have a better teacher to learn command. He's referring to Sisko. That's funny - I seem to recall him telling Picard in The Wounded that he counted himself lucky to have served with the 'two finest captains in Starfleet" (meaning Benjamin Maxwell and Jean-Luc Picard). He hadn’t met Sisko when he made his statement in The Wounded. Changed Premises # Just after the opening credits we see Bashir and O'Brien enjoying some down time in Quark's. O'Brien places a small round object on the back of his hand and pops it into his mouth. Bashir Is suitably impressed and attempts to duplicate the feat. At one point during the scene, Bashir asks Quark for some yamok sauce to go with their "sand peas." Presumably this is what the two gentlemen are popping into their mouths. Interestingly enough, they are not "instantly reaching" for their drinks each time they eat one. Pel introduces Quark to Gramilian sand peas in Rules of Acquisition as a way to boost drink sales, Supposedly the peas inhibit the production of saliva. The episode demonstrates that every time you eat a sand pea, you instantly reach for your drink. (Yes, it is possible that O'Brien is playing with another type of sand pea, but that seems like a stretch to find an explanation.) O’Brien and Bashir could be testing themselves by not instantly reaching for their drinks after eating the sand peas. # At the beginning of his meeting with Sisko and Kira, General Martok cuts his hand and asks them to do the same. The drops of blood on the table remain blood, thereby proving everyone is who they claim to be and not Changelings in disguise. (You may recall that The Adversary established that if any part of a Changeling separates from the whole, that part reverts to its gelatinous state.) I think this episode once and for all establishes that the creators of the television episodes have no intention of following the Klingon blood color established by Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. General Martok's blood is red. The different coloured Klingon blood in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country could be a temporary side effect of the Praxis explosion. # This episode presents yet another type of kanar. You may recall that the Cardassian drink kanar makes its first appearance in The Wounded (TNG). In that episode it's clear. Next, we see Garak drinking kanar in The Wire. In that episode it's light bluish. Next we see Quark bring a bottle of kanar to the quarters of the Cardassian scientist in Destiny. In that episode kanar appears to be a dark liquid. Finally, in this episode, Garak walks into Quark's and orders a bottle of kanar. It comes in the same bottle as the dark liquid but now is pinkish. ScottN (Nit Central) on Saturday, August 07, 1999 - 12:40 pm: Perhaps kanar is a generic term, like wine? Earth wines have various colors, perhaps there are various colors of kanar? Equipment Oddities # Evidently Klingon cloaks are better than Romulan cloaks. In this episode an armada of more than twenty Klingon vessels approaches the station, and no one is the wiser until they decloak. In The Die is Cast an armada of twenty Romulan and Cardassian vessels approached the station, and Dax registered a tachyon surge before they decloaked. That could have been a slight incompatibility between the cloaking devices and the systems on the Cardassian ships. ''' # When it becomes evident that the Klingons will soon attack the station, Quark closes up shop and turns to stand guard in front of his locked doorway. Odo wanders by and asks how Quark intends to defend himself. Our favorite Ferengi barkeep proudly opens a box he carries, only to find that Rom has taken his disrupter pistol to use for parts. Just how much do these disrupter pistols weigh? Why didn't Quark notice the box was empty the minute he picked it up? '''Rom may have hidden a weight in the box. # Well, it's nice to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's true. The station now has integrated phaser banks on every level. It's true. The station now has five thousand photon torpedoes. All I can say is, they need them all because the targeting systems can’t hit the broad side of the barn! Much of the exterior footage shows slow-moving Klingon vessels, and photon torpedoes screaming off into empty space. For every six or seven torpedoes, one finally hits something! (Of course, if you've got five thousand of them and the Klingons have only several dozen ships...) Then again, maybe these photon torpedoes are some kind of super-duper photon torpedoes. They appear to have a lousy guidance system, but they really pack a punch. Every time one of them hits a Bird-of-Prey, the ship blows up! The torpedoes may be carrying an enhanced warhead, similar to the thermobaric warheads used in current ‘bunker buster’ bombs, and may not have enough room for a proper guidance system. (A similar problem occurs with the special torpedo Nog prepares in Valiant). Continuity And Production Problems # Not really a nit, just an observation: Worf's martial arts suit is black in this episode. During NextGen it was white. This could be an indication of Worf reaching the next level in his chosen martial art, similar to the coloured belts used in Judo and Karate. # After Garak orders kanar, Quark pours him a glass of root beer. Garak finds the drink revolting. No wonder. Look at the glass: The stuff is completely flat! It doesn't even form a head when Quark pours it out of the jug. (The sound effects guys did try to help this problem by dubbing in a fizzing sound, but as soon as you get a clear view of the glass„ it's pretty obvious that the stuff ain't got no zip.) Apparently Quark keeps his stock of root beer in an open pitcher! No wonder it doesn't taste any good. It doesn't have any bubbles to tickle the nose! So what? I tried some once, and it tasted exactly like the stuff dentist’s give their patients to rinse their mouth out with! # At the very end of the big hand-to-hand fight in Ops, Dax sweeps a Klingon off his feet with a bat'leth before turning to ferociously survey the room. The camera angle changes to Sisko and then pans over to Dax. Now she's empty-handed. There is time for her to throw the bat'leth to the ground, but there is no clattering sound to indicate that's what she did. (Granted, it's not really a nit. It just looks funny.) Maybe she quickly placed it on the ground? Nit Central # Avidan Ackerson on Tuesday, January 05, 1999 - 6:01 pm: In "The Way of the Warrior" you see the Klingons are beaming over, and attacking everywhere. There is a scene with Garak and Dukat who are fighting, as Garak puts it "side by side". Dukat is grappling with a Klingon, while Garak is shooting them down. So, why doesn't Garak shoot the Klingon that's fighting with Dukat? Does he think a Klingon will come down to kill him, if he helps Dukat? Does he think that he'll miss, and hit something else? Does he just want Dukat to be killed? Personally, I go with the last one. It could be he knows that shooting the Klingon grappling with Dukat would leave him open to attack by the others. # Chris Marks on Friday, April 16, 1999 - 4:26 am: I've just thought of a huge nit, either in this episode, or in the Shadow/Light two parter in season 5. At the start, Martok comes into the conference lounge, and he, Sisko and Kira use Martok’s blade to prove they're not changelings by spilling blood onto the lighttray. By Apocalypse Rising, Martok is now a changeling. However, in In Purgatory's Shadow (I think, I haven't seen it for a while), Martok has been a dominion prisoner for two years, which would be somewhere around the middle of season three (ignoring the premise that changelings have already started replacing people two and a half years before the war started). Of course, the Martok changeling could have had a supply of klingon blood somewhere, but how could it have kept it from drying out during storage? LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: By keeping it cold when not using it, and warming it up when he’s about to cut himself. Remember all the things Changelings can do. They became fire, they can become fog, they can exist as energy, they can survive in the vacuum of space, and if a Changeling becomes a rock, a tricorder will scan the disguised Changeling as a rock, according to The Adversary. It should be no problem at all to keep the blood in his body at whatever temperature necessary, and even if he couldn’t, he could store it in a locker, defrost it by the time he gets to the station (he wouldn’t even need do so naturally; he could probably use a replicator or other device to heat it), stick in his body, and then put on his show for Sisko and Kira. # Keith Alan Morgan on Saturday, May 08, 1999 - 8:42 am: Was it some kind of order that during this exercise Odo be referred to as simply a "Changeling" instead of as Odo? (True, if they had referred to him as Odo then the audience might have realized that this was some kind of drill, but the characters wouldn't have known an audience was watching.) Probably done to make it more realistic. # Sisko says to schedule a surprise drill... If it is scheduled, then how can it be a surprise? LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: Sisko says this to Kira. They’ll know when the drill is, as would presumably Odo. Everyone else won’t. Seniram He probably used the word schedule in the sense of arranging it. # Kasidy says that Cestus III is 3 weeks away at maximum warp, but in Family Business she says that it takes a subspace communication 2 weeks to travel from Cestus III to Bajor. I thought subspace communications were 60 times faster than the fastest warp? LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: She actually says 8 weeks. Seniram Either way, the maximum warp she is referring to could be that of either her ship or a runabout, which is lower that that of a starship. # When meeting Worf, Jadzia says something in Klingon, then tells the others that it loses something in translation. Does any Klingon speaking Nitpicker have a translation? Sarah Perkins on Wednesday, May 12, 1999 - 3:41 pm: According to the novelization of this episode, Worf asks if she was once Curzon Dax. Jadzia answers, in Klingon, "Yes, but I'm a lot better-looking than he was." and then adds the comment that it loses something in the translation. I found this *hilarious* and totally Dax.... # REFERENCE TO 6TH SEASON SHOW Worf attacks Drex, son of Martok, and Martok says that Worf "Robbed my son of his honor!" Interesting that by the time of Soldiers of the Empire Martok will make Worf a member of his House. (I wonder if that will make Worf and Drex in-laws?) Aaron Dotter on Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 8:37 pm: Wasn’t Martok a changeling by this point? Do we have a date for when he was replaced? Keith Alan Morgan on Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 10:23 pm: WARNING! SPOILER! Yes. The real Martok was in a Dominion prison camp at this time. However, that may have been the real Drex, so he would still be robbed of his honor. (And he didn't kill his father when he returned from captivity, which I believe would dishonor him even more. Wasn't something like that mentioned in the NextGen eps Birthright I & II & the one where Riker served on a Klingon ship?) # The old Klingon mentions how Mogh saved his family's honor during a blood feud with the House of Duras. Hold it. Hold it. House of Duras? I thought it was called the House of Duras after Duras whom we met in Sins of the Father & Reunion? I suppose he could have been Duras II or Duras III or Duras could be a family name, but the Klingon Houses seem to bear the personal names of the various Klingons involved. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: Perhaps it was called the House of Jarod during that feud, but Huraga is simply referring to it by its current name. Seniram Besides, some Klingon families may retain the name of the founder of the house, as opposed to using the name of the current head. # The justification for warning the Cardassians about the Klingon attack comes from Worf's statement that this is just a start to the return to the old conquering ways of the Klingon Empire. Well, does Worf believe that the Federation didn't know the Klingons were a race of conquerors when it signed the peace treaty? LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: But the events of ST VI seemed to represent a watershed event for the softening of the Empire’s attitude towards its neighbors by the NextGen era, which is supported by Ambassador Kel‘s comments in The Mind's Eye about how differently the Empire is reacting to a demand for independence by one of its colonies, compared to how it would’ve reacted in times past.. # This nit could go in many episodes, but why does the Defiant need to drop its shields to transport? In the whole history of Star Trek, when a ship is being attacked there is usually some comment about 'aft shields down by something percent', or 'we've just lost the starboard shields' or something to indicate that it is possible to lose part of the shield, but still maintain the rest of the shields. It sounds to me like these ships have at least six shield projectors which produce that oval shield bubble. So couldn't they just drop the keel shields and beam the people on board while maintaining the other five? LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: This would depend on where the transporter emitters are located on the exterior of the ship, and just how large an area the shields that cover them are. If there are six shield areas, that could mean a shield area is one sixth the area of the ship, and bringing down the ones over the area where the emitters are located could leave that portion of the ship vulnerable. # I guess Cardassian Guls don't believe in going down with their ship. Gul Dukat beams on board the Defiant while "half the council members" are still on his ship. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: Given how self-important he is, are you surprised? Seniram He probably felt it necessary to speak to Sisko. # The Defiant has just saved the Detepa Council and is heading back to DS9, (Sounds like a TV commercial, "Captain Sisko, you've just saved the Detepa Council. Where are you going next?") but the cloaking device is not working. However, since the Defiant is known to be based at DS9 and DS9 is the closest Federation outpost, would it really matter if they are cloaked or not? The most logical assumption would be for the Klingons to send ships to DS9 and wait for the Defiant, whether it's cloaked or not. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: Sure it matters. The route may not necessarily be a straight line. Maybe ships have to go around the Denorios Belt when going from the station to Cardassia. Cloaking provides an advantage if they zigzag it home. As for the Klingons sending ships to the station, well, that’s exactly what they end up doing. Seniram Besides, Klingons aren’t exactly known for logical reasoning! ''' # In Civil Defense there was a deadly weapon which zapped non-Cardassians. It's a pity O'Brien didn't isolate the codes to manufacture the device. When another race is attacking the station just program it to vaporize anyone of that race who transports onto the station. (Okay, Worf would have to keep his head down or stay on the Defiant, but hey, it's a small price to pay.) '''That function may have been disabled for safety reasons. # The mek'leth doesn't seem to offer Worf as much protection as a good old bat'leth. The Bat'leth can act as a shield while being used to stab and slash, while the mek'leth is mainly only good for cutting and stabbing. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: Weapons have different advantages and disadvantages. Yeah, the bat’leth acts as shield, or at least a larger one. But the mek’leth weighs less, and is smaller, so it is easier to manipulate, and may be seen as better for close-quarters combat. # The Klingons and Federation officers are battling on DS9 with bat’leths, mek’leths and knives. However, neither Jadzia nor Sisko seem to be using these sharp pointed weapons to their best advantage. It looks like they are trying to use these things as blunt weapons and knock their opponents out instead of stabbing them and moving on to the next Klingon. I realize that the Federation believes in the sanctity of life, but they are fighting for their lives here and they should kill their opponents. (I know, I know. It's just a TV show with actors and stunt men trying to make it look exciting, but still, they could have choreographed it more realistically.) They were probably trying to avoid unnecessary deaths. # So why didn't the Organians put a stop to this? Perhaps they have become extinct? # Anonymous on Sunday, October 03, 1999 - 1:31 pm: Why doesn’t Starfleet issue head and body armor (something like police riot gear) for hand-to-hand combat situations like this. It may take too long to put on in an ambush situation, and could prove too restrictive. # Why is Dr. Bashir out in the thick of the battle, instead of holding down the fort in Sickbay? Seniram Probably so he can be available to immediately assess injuries, while his staff prepare for more serious cases. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am: I got the impression that he simply stepped out for a sec before stepping back in. If there were no casualties coming in, perhaps he couldn’t stand by when he saw that he had clear shots at some Klingons. # George on Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 12:32 pm: When did Worf's relationship with Troi end? They seemed to be together at the end of All Good Things... (TNG), but no mention seems to be made of it ever again between that and Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places (DS9), when Worf and Dax got together. And certainly no word about it when Riker and Troi got back together in Star Trek: Insurrection. Was it between All Good Things... and Star Trek: Generations? Chris Thomas on Monday, January 24, 2000 - 12:47 am: If you read the book Imzadi II, it fills in the gaps about the Worf/Troi relationship and is set just after Star Trek Generations, but before this story. # Also, one would think Worf and O'Brien would have been surprised to learn that Dax was a Trill. There was no "But I thought Ambassador Odan was a Trill, and she didn't look anything like you...." when each first met Dax, and no explanation of the differences between Trills A and Trills B Phil mentioned in the DS9 Guide. The Federation probably learnt more about Trill society after the events of The Host. # Ratbat on Tuesday, February 08, 2000 - 7:26 am: So just why doesn't Drex come and get his own knife back? Well, he's a hard one. He *told* on Worf. He’s most likely too ashamed. # It's not really a nit, but Worf looks really out of place wearing his old uniform. Everyone else by this point in the series wears the 'fatigues' on DS9. (In fact, remember Miles in EMISSARY, who managed to *exclusively* wear his 'duty uniform' on the ENTERPRISE, and his fatigues on DS9.) These are among the standard uniform options. # Andreas Schindel on Tuesday, May 30, 2000 - 9:29 am: At the beginning, Odo turns to a heavy bird. I am surprised that he can fly. Does he gave an antigrav device in his belly? This could be a natural ability. # Anonymous on Wednesday, July 12, 2000 - 8:34 am: My nit, or strategy question is: If I were leading the Klingons, (haha) I would have been THRILLED that the entire governing body of Cardassia (Detepa Council) fled the planet! I mean, doesn't it make it that much easier for them to take over? Can you imagine if the U.S. were on the brink of invasion and the President, his top military advisor, and the entire cabinet, fled to, let's say, France??? (I believe the media would describe that situation as "a toppled government.") It would create chaos, and that would only make it easier for the invaders! Not necessarily! Shouldn't the Council stick around to govern during this terrible crisis? Are they so irreplaceable that they have to be spirited away, like the Royal Family? If they were killed, couldn't new leaders be found? Any new leaders may not be regarded as legitimate by the population. If they (the original leaders) are determined to flee, wouldn't it be safer for them, during an invasion FROM OUTER SPACE, to hide on the planet, and not run off into space?! I mean, it seems to me that hiding under their beds would have been a lot more effective than getting on a ship.There may not have been anywhere safe for them on the planet. # LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 4:15 am: Since Dax apparently managed to convince Kira to try having some fun in a holosuite, despite her stated distaste for them in Second Skin and Meridian, I wonder if Quark thought to make a scan of her while she was in there and finally make that holoprogram Tiron wanted in Meridian, in order to smooth things over with him. Dax probably convinced Kira to use it by programming the simulation to prevent scans of the occupants. # Why are the Klingons, like Martok’s son Drex, allowed to carry daggers on the Promenade, given Odo’s statement to Sisko in Emissary that he doesn’t allow weapons on the Promenade? Maybe he was – eventually – persuaded to allow dress knives worn as part of the uniform. # Under nits for Paradise, it was pointed out how in The Outrageous Okona (TNG), Riker stood over Wesley’s shoulder when Wesley put a tractor beam on Okona’s ship, offering support on keeping the movement of the two ships steady and in sync, as if putting a tractor beam on another ship is a delicate, precise procedure, but this episode, like Paradise, seems to indicate that putting the beam on another ship is a lot easier it looked in the earlier one. When the Defiant rescues Dukat and the Detapa Council in this episode, the Dax locks a tractor beam on the Klingon attack cruiser, which definitely not a willing participant, even less so than the unmmaned Rio Grande in Paradise. Tractor beam technology has obviously been improved since The Outrageous Okona incident. In any case, Wes didn’t have as much experience with tractor beams as a graduated Starfleet officer # Immediately after saving Dukat and the Detapa Council, Sisko out an order to the bridge crew: "Raise shields. Activate the cloak." Apparently, Sisko forgot that you can’t do these two things at the same time. Unless the Defiant has some experimental equipment that allows at least partial shields while cloaked! (Assuming that wasn’t disabled when the cloak went offline.) # The shot of the Klingon attack cruiser flying toward the camera as Dukat’s ship explodes in the background is simply gorgeous. The only problem with it is that when the Cardassian ship explodes, the front of the Klingon ship should go black in silhouette because the explosion is behind it. True, starships should usually be mostly in shadow, and the outer space lighting seen on them in Trek is unrealistic, but this was even more so. Maybe it was lit from a nearby star? # Garak insists on defending the station quarters where the Detapa Council are located, and while Dukat is at first reluctant, he eventually decides to let Garak stand with him. There are two Starfleet security officers standing behind them who don’t say a word. I don’t get this. Do civilians really have the authority to just walk around with weapons, with nary a word from security? I don’t care if Garak claims he’s going to help them; he’s an unknown quantity, a former Cardassian spy who’s armed, and his motives are not necessarily the same as Starfleet’s. Allowing him to stay there, armed, without even saying anything is stupid. Perhaps they have orders to co-operate with the Cardassians. # After the Defiant returns to DS9 following the rescue of the Detapa Council, Martok demands their surrender. Sisko refuses, and says he blood tested the council members. Gowron appears, and the shot of he and Martok remains in a medium shot. When Sisko tells them the station’s been prepped for a Dominion attack, the Ops viewer suddenly cuts to a close-up of Gowron. This could have been done from the Klingon ship, to make Gowron look more intimidating. # Toward the end of the episode, when Quark pours a glass of kanar for Garak, the drink is pink. In Destiny, Quark walked into the scientists quarters with a tray holding two bottles of kanar, but they were black in color. True, they turned out to be bad, but if such a color change occurs when kanar goes bad, why did Quark need to smell it? Shouldn’t he have known this, given that he spent all those years on the station during the Cardassian occupation? Or were only the bottles opaque black? If so, why are they clear in this episode? Perhaps the kanar comes in a variety of bottles, as well as different colours. # LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 7:03 am:''Mike Ram: in several episodes we get the impression that cloaked ships at warp can be detected because of the tachyon surge (or with anti-proton beams). why engage the cloak if the klingons can detect the ship anyway? '''Luigi Novi: We don’t know if the Klingons are familiar with this tracking method. Sisko and crew didn’t even know that anti-proton scans could detect cloaked ships until the Jem’Hadar used that technique in The Search Part 1, and Sisko had to turn and ask T’Rul if that method worked, and T’Rul was reluctant to answer.' # LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, October 20, 2002 - 9:39 am: When Kasidy’s distress signal first comes into Sisko’s office, Sisko tells Kira that Kasidy left an hour ago. By the time the Defiant gets to the Xhosa, the M’Char still has the Xhosa in its tractor beam. What’s taking it so long? If it took the Xhosa an hour to get out here, then it must’ve taken the Defiant around that long, perhaps less. Shouldn’t the crew of the M’Char have conducted their search already, or at least begun to? The Defiant could be faster than the Xhosa, and the freighter's crew could have stalled the Klingons in an attempt to prevent the search. # Keith Alan Morgan: In Part I, Kasidy said she would be back in 3 weeks, in Part II, she just gets back. Funny, it only seemed like she was gone for a day. (Even less if you watch the story as a two hour movie.) Luigi Novi: First, she said two weeks. Second, while it is true that many Trek episodes take place over time spans that are sometimes difficult for the director to convey, there is nothing to indicate that this time didn’t pass, and plenty of opportunities between span where it not only could’ve passed, but must’ve. After Sisko rescues the Xhosa, Kira tells Sisko that the Klingons have modified their policy, and are now searching ships in unclaimed space. It must’ve taken some time for the Defiant/M’Char encounter to have gotten back to Martok, and then to Gowron, for Gowron or Martok to have issued the new orders, for news of the Klingons altered m.o. to have gotten to Kira, etc. Then, after Martok announced Kaybok’s execution to Sisko and Dax, Sisko had to summon Worf, who needed time to arrive at the station. There is plenty of plot to cover two weeks, even if that feeling is difficult to sense when watching it. # Thande on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 7:10 am: I guess they just don't build them birds-of-prey like they used to. (Or possibly they build photon torpedoes a LOT better than they used to, if you're an optimist. :)) Throughout the Star Trek saga we see several times a bird-of-prey get hit with a photon torpedo. In chronological order: Star Trek 3 - An UNSHIELDED bird-of-prey gets hit with TWO photon torpedoes and absolutely nothing happens. Star Trek 6 - An UNSHIELDED bird-of-prey gets hit with ONE photon torpedo and the front blows up. It takes several more to completely destroy the ship. Star Trek Generations - An UNSHIELDED bird-of-prey is hit with ONE photon torpedo and it blows up instantly. This episode Several SHIELDED birds-of-prey get hit with ONE photon torpedo each and INSTANTLY BLOW UP!! So the birds-of-prey seem to get progressively weaker, or photon torpedoes get progressively more powerful, over time. At least this is one thing where the Enterprise writers keep to continuity: in The Expanse, set before any of these instances, an early model bird-of-prey is hit with several photon torpedoes and nothing happens! Brian FitzGerald on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - 12:29 pm: Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Look at modern warfare. We've had armored vehicles, tanks, on the battlefield since WWI. When it first appeared you were having to use things like molatov cocktails and sticky bombs. Armor has gotten a lot better since than, but so have our ways to pierce it. Now we have precision guided munitions that can pierce through most forms of armor. We have those "bunker busters" that can destroy whole armored underground bunkers in one shot. If your enemies are using energy shields to protect their ships it makes sense that you would want to try to improve your photon torpedoes to punch through the shields more better. Of course the Klingons would have done the same to their torpedoes but you'd figure that the shields on a massive station, with a big powerplant, would have stronger shields than those dinky little birds of prey. inblackestnight on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - 1:34 pm: No visible damage is done to the BoP with the first torpedo, unless you count the ship shaking and the cloak shutting off. Thande on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 7:10 am: It is easy to forget but there are two main types of the Bird of Prey. The B'rel class is a small ship with a crew of around 12, this is the type of BoP seen in ST III and IV. The other type is the K'vort class, which is far larger in size and was introduced in TNG, but is of exactly the same design (Not a great surprise, as its the same model). The smaller ship is not going to have shields as strong as its bigger brother. From what I can tell the only way to tell the two apart on screen, without someone saying what the class is, is by the position of the wings. The B'rel seems to attack and/or fly with its wings lowered, while the K'vort class maintains its wings in the raised position. # Cybermortis on Monday, May 05, 2008 - 4:30 pm: OK, we have Klingon warriors storming ops and the command crew fights them hand to hand and wins...Now Dax has shown she knows how to use a Bat'leth and she has seven lifetimes of experience to fall back on, so that's not a problem. Kira, well she fought against the Cardassians most of her life, she's an experienced fighter so again no problem. Worf's fighting abilities are of course without question, and O'Brian gets thumped - hardly surprising as he's an engineer...but SISKO!? Where did Sisko get the skills to fight off rampaging Klingons? I know he did wrestling at some point but it stretches credibility that he'd be so good he can not only fight off several opponents stronger than he is, but he's also so good he can pick up a Bat'leth and fight a Klingon warrior on equal terms with it. I'm starting to think that these 'Baseball' games he plays on the holodeck are just an excuse to allow him to walk into the Holodeck three times a week with a baseball bat without anyone asking what he's really up to....Merat on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 - 12:16 pm: Starfleet Academy unarmed and handheld weapons training? Also, didn't we get some boxing mentions in his past? # John A. Lang (Johnalang) on Sunday, July 24, 2016 - 8:39 pm: Why did the Klingons attack DS9 after it was determined that the Cardassian Council were not Changelings? I mean...that was the whole point of the attack on Cardassia....because the Klingons thought Changelings took over. I guess "Glory" is better than "Honor" The Klingons may not have believed that the Cardassians were not Changelings. Notes Category:Episodes Category:Deep Space Nine